I make lemons out of lemonade. Good TV is my heroin. Sometimes I curse, with gusto.

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Tag Archives: courtroom drama

If you’re not already following it, I have to recommend tamaratattles.com if you’re at all interested in the Jodi Arias trial. Not only are her posts great, but some of the funniest, smartest, and all-round entertaining comments can be found there!

(She has tons of other topics she posts about, too…probably something for everyone there.)

I love it when I come across things like this…these folks make me enjoy humanity for a while. And that’s not an easy thing to do.

Below is a conversation I’ve been having on twitter…I avoided explaining that the evil lifeblood of twitter is that (other than celebs & others who use it to promote themselves & make money) many people use it as a tool to “explore”, shall we say, their pent up aggressions and frustrations in a fairly anonymous manner, without having to face real consequences. Why did I avoid it? Because this woman seems like a nice person and there’s no point in making her feel even more animosity towards tweeps.

For example, I used to tweet almost solely about politics through a different account, and politics-on-twitter is the epitome of social media hate, vitriol, viciousness, take-my-side-or-I’ll-tell-my-3000-followers-to-block/attack-you-mercilessly, boundless bullying, death threats, stalking, and general out of control scumbaggery. It’s the nature of the beast – don’t enter that den unless you can take being ripped to shreds – or perhaps worse, watching others being ripped to shreds, sometimes for months, as they’re ganged up on by dozens of people who were supposedly their “friends” just last week, or the previous day, or the previous hour. And it never ends because politics never ends. It’s not like a trial that ends, or celebrity scandals that blow over, etc. It is INSANITY.

So I guess I’ve seen (and occasionally been somewhat involved in) some of the worst that twitter has to offer. From taking a brief look at this woman’s twitter stream, she just discovered twitter last year…she’s still discussing things thoughtfully and rationally. Yay! I’m happy to have a dialogue with someone like that on a topic we may be in disagreement on. It’s refreshing and – omigawd, as I was typing, some words came outta my fingers that actually made some sense. So I’m sharing here….

The point I made at the end is what this post is about. Not only is an expert witness fair game, but especially when that expert witness is being paid by the state’s tax payers. Even though my tax dollars aren’t paying for the witnesses in the Jodi Arias case, or the defense team of #Jirk, I was born in Arizona and lived there for more than half my life so although I’d have the same opinion in regard to any state, Arizona’s a little closer to my heart.

Rather than scaring all potential defense attorneys and expert witnesses away, as @NCasserly believes (I don’t think this country will ever run out of attorneys and experts who will sell their moth-eaten souls for money), but I think this kind of online uproar over these expert witnesses will have a positive effect. Eventually potential experts will realize they had better be extremely well prepared, and have done their jobs properly and impartially, before coming into the courtroom and testifying. And the defense attorneys will hopefully prepare them better – #Jirk did pretty poorly in that sense, and didn’t seem to have even explained to LaViolence what kinds of Q’s and A’s would be involved in cross.

I testified in court once, just briefly, and was only told what the subject matter was, not a peep about cross examination, which by now, most of us know is a very, very different animal than direct. I was shocked when the attorney for the other side posed a question as a statement of fact, and he did it quickly and very smoothly right after asking several “easy” questions. Fortunately, there was only one question like that and it was completely contrary to the truth so my answer came out very naturally and enthusiastically as to the truth. I can’t even imaginewhat it’d be like in a criminal trial – the attorneys must prepare witnesses for exactly what cross examination consists of, and the witnesses mustbe very well prepared to face it, confidently.

I was googling the spelling of Alyce LaViolette’s name because in this post commenter Ria is capitalizing the V, and I wasn’t since I thought they weren’t capitalizing it on the little identifier doo-hickey thingies at the bottom of the TV screen. Anyway, I guess the V is capitalized. I should’ve known Ria would be trustworthy by now.

During my search I came across this post, which might be worth a look for folks interested in more opining on Le Beeyotch Of Bullshitte, Alyce LaViolette. The post is a bit long for me so I didn’t make it through the whole thing (not a knock against the author whatsoever, it’s just because I can’t bear reading about this woman for too long), but it looks like some nice discussion has been going on in the comment thread. For those hungry to engage in a lil’ round or two of brouhaha, you might find some fodder there.

As an aside, I hate her frigging name. It’s pretentious and I think it’s fake. (I have no basis for that, other than the trusty ol’ gut feeling. But I’m thinking of changing my name to Lyzz LeMonne and see what I can get out of it.)

To Jane Velez-Mitchell (@jvelezmitchell): Thank goodness there’s one person on @HLNTV with their brain functioning. I just went through the ceiling, finishing up watching the trial coverage from Thursday, and could not believe how every “expert” and guest on the HLN shows were freaking about Martinez’s cross examination of Laviolette. JVM actually had to explain the importance of his approach to the commentators and guests this morning. Whaa????

To HLN: your “experts” and guests are completely out of touch with the reality of the general population (aka JURORS!). Their whining made me want to slap some sense into them. (Oh wait – should I not say that because this a domestic violence “expert” witness??? Give me a break.)

I thought Samuels liked to hear himself talk – he had nothing on this woman. Laviolette did not provide a single bit of evidence that Arias was a victim of domestic violence – instead, she droned on and on and on, essentially forcing everyone to attend her little DV seminar while she collects $250/hr for re-victimizing the murder victim and throwing a massive pity-party for his murderer. It was a damned boring party – except for the parts where her testimony was actually showing that Travis was the victim of abuse by Jodi…too bad that evidence doesn’t seem to be admissible, though.

When Martinez started cross-examining Laviolette, she very quickly started getting snarky. She kept looking at the defense table and smiling wryly (you know patronizing people can be, like when they have their little secret clique and have already decided how they’re going to “deal with” someone they don’t like). At times she looked at the jury box and tried to do the same with them – nearly even rolling her eyes – but I got the sense that none of them were playing along because she’d quickly drop her eyes and wipe that snarky smile off her face.

She was smirking at Martinez, and right off the bat refused to give straight answers to his questions and then quickly started arguing with him – does she not understand this is a courtroom? She’s testified in court many times, right? And then she quickly commenced with challenging him. Who the hell does she think she is? He’s not there for a tea party, he’s prosecuting a confessed killer and this “expert” is behaving like a – there’s no other way to say it – a catty brat, and a bit of a bitch. I actually think she should have been admonished for coming dangerously close to contempt of court.

If she were truly confident in her assessment of Arias, she would have no need to argue with Martinez, she could simply answer his questions with confidence and be able to back up her statements and findings. She can’t, and thus her catty-bratty attitude from the starting line. Completely unprofessional, especially considering the “expertise” she supposedly has.

If I were a juror, just that amount of cross examination that was conducted on Thursday would have discredited her in my mind.

Laviolette asked Martinez to speak to her in the same way she was speaking to him – if you ask me, that’s what he did…just a little bit louder.